October 6, 2021 | Poetry
Two Poems
Amira Maher
analgesic for apostates
nosediving from the ketamine and
distracting myself from the open
wound on my back, crimson-soaked
mesh shorts and criminally cotton
mouth, the nurse flashes flawless
October 3, 2021 | Rejected Modern Love Essay
Normal Girls Who Aren’t Afraid of Crackers
Meg Thompson
“Maybe your ears are broken,” my husband mused to me one night at dinner.
I was wearing headphones, eyes trained to study my plate, the sight of chewing as triggering as the audible noises.
September 29, 2021 | Nonfiction
My Roommate from Eleven North
Barrie Miskin
They liked to brag. Who had the highest dose of anti-psychotic medication? Who had gone the furthest off the rails during a manic episode? And they loved to boast about their suicide attempts. Whose was the most gruesome?
Unity Trash
Kate McLean
When Tony died, I stopped recycling. The kind of power play that was both meaningful and meaningless.
Prison Killed My Libido
Sheryl Anderson as-told-to Christine Fadden
I don’t write “I have the libido of a sloth” in my online dating profile. I don’t use my real surname now either.
Bride School Girls
Amanda Churchill
The Class of 1953 Tachikawa Air Base Bride School girls were fertile, well-fed and rested.
This isn’t a story about being in a wheelchair
Lane Chasek
The only reason I’ve seen Space Jam: A New Legacy so much recently is because I wanted to avoid talking to my wife.
Devoted and Very Fine Hunters
Isaac George Lauritsen
Life is viciously short.
Dumb and Wide
Mary B. Sellers
"Me, all scatter-shotted words I tried out in the air ..."
Eating Oaks
Jim Krosschell
Spring was months away; I could pretend peril didn’t exist.
Looking For Love At A Celibate Barbecue
Joe Leonard
“And then after I came out to my wife, she stumbled across People Can Change,” said the man from Fresno.
The Reward; When Things Repeat
Sean Thomas Dougherty
Don’t they let you? Don’t they ever let you lay down your head?
The Myth of Healing
Barrie Miskin
n the car, on the way to the hospital, I put my head in my lap and my hands over my ears, willing the city to disappear.
About Fucking
Gabriel Smith
So obviously I couldn’t do it. She would have known it was real.
"I was trying to be this smart funny guy who writes about his deadbeat hometown and marginalized culture"
Aaron Burch Interviews Anthony Veasna So
Years after reading the story (Junot Diaz' "Drown"), after teaching it to high schoolers (many of them POC), I set out to rewrite this queer of color narrative in my story, "The Monks." I wanted to show how a straight, masculine guy of color could brush up against queerness and feel empowered by it, not scared, even if in the slightest of ways, the slightest of spiritual progressions.
Making you come is like holding a firework: the Marital Benefits of Sexting
Shelby Hinte
Marriage is often thought of as having little to do with eroticism.1
I met my husband while bartending in Oakland. He applied to be the new chef. Tattooed knuckles. Chubby cheeks. Full beard.
Shore
Rebecca Entel
That summer held the moment, in real time and in my memory for several years, of something he said that I didn’t hear.
Ten Years Have Passed in Ninety Days
Madison L. Sargeant
The mushrooms I bought yesterday are moldy; the lines around my mouth have deepened. Tomorrow I am a mother for the first time.
